I don’t know about you but I’m beginning to get the idea that Remington is seriously pissed at NBC. The gunmaker’s PR mavens are producing a stream of videos (so to speak) kicking and re-kicking the network’s rear end for its scurrilous reporting on 30 Rock. (Click here to see the original sandbag job.) At some point, you might wonder if Remington should STFU and get back to the business of creating and promoting 700s and such. Still, Schadenfreude never looked so good. Or sounded so sad. What up with all those minor cords Alyssa?

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Robert Farago is the Publisher of The Truth About Guns (TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns.

13 Responses to Remington Targets NBC’s “Expert Witness” Tom Butters

NBC was clearly biased and irresponsible against Remington in their reporting, and deserve the backlash. I applaud Remington for attempting to hold NBC accountable, as well as for the manufacture of the outstanding Remington 870 and 700.

I’d like to see media accontabilty in many more matters as well, but this is a good start.

I don’t care what the issue or industry is, the more people start taking the “Yellow Journalists” to task for their bullsh!t sensationalism and outright lies the better. I hope they file a slander/defamation/libel/something suit against them. For that matter, if he’s found innocent, I hope Zimmerman does too.

Ok I went and watched the video. Some demonstrations are grainy and not sure of exact conditions. Given the shear number of model 700 units sold it stands to reason that you could have a lemon or maybe it wasn’t properly cleaned or maintained etc. this causes the shown firing issues. I really haven’t read that deeply into the issue, but I would think there needs to be some reason for the miss firing shown.
I am not saying NBC isn’t biased but you would figure if you were doing a story you would sit with Remington and find out why they think there are issues, better yet take one of the miss firing guns and do a complete break down of it. Show that in fact there is sand in it, or maybe a part was broken.
The fact that their choice of expert was trying to sell a design to them for money makes it wrong in and of itself.
I would believe it more if Remington and a military weapons expert took some of the offending units and tried to get to the bottom of any issue. I know no one wants to have a miss fire. This is why I never point my gun anywhere that could hit someone even if it is disassembled.

Remington has made more than ten MILLION 870s since 1950. It’s the best-selling shotgun in the world. It’s popular with military, law enforcement, and civilians, and used for about everything a shotgun is good for.

If the gun wasn’t safe, don’t you think gun-owners would long ago have figured that out and said so?

I have a 700 Mil-Spec that came with a X-Mark Pro trigger. And after adjusting the trigger to what I would consider an acceptable pull weight, it would fire when flipping the safety off. But only if it had been sitting with the safety on, for more than five hours or so. Ultimately I found the best way to adjust it, was to remove the two pins that hold it in and replace it with a Timney.

And like I said, it only started doing that, after I had messed with it. And I would suspect that the triggers on the guns that NBC showed in the videos, had also been messed with.

As others have pointed out. If you always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction, nobody will get hurt. You just have to remember that the most important safety, is the one between your ears.

I started by completely removing, the so-called external adjustment screw, but the trigger pull was still somewhere around four or five hundred pounds. So then I backed out the trigger-pull weight adjustment screw, that is on all 700 triggers, till it was as light as I could get it, without firing when slamming the bolt closed. But later found that if it sat for a while, it would fire when the safety was flipped off, but would do just fine if I didn’t engage the safety at all. In the end, the x-mark was inconsistent at any weight and had too much over-travel, that I could not adjust out. So I replaced it with a Timney and problem solved.